I'm starting to think political analysis and playing the banjo are quite separate, maybe even totally unrelated, skills.

Struggling to get through this Adam Buxton interview with Damon Albarn. I know you all said, but I'm not sure I've ever heard him interviewed before. Has he always been this much of an arse?

hear hear

Begging HMRC to print "Don't worry, it's nothing bad" on their envelopes when the contents are not, in fact, anything bad.

My friends created this little collection of poetry written by students in Gaza under unimaginable conditions. If anyone wanted to give it a boost they would be most grateful.

This is really interesting tho I don't quite follow the logic. As it says, streaming is a necessary loss leader for Apple and Amazon to flog phones/Prime anyway, so why would their platforms become obsolete?

I shazamed the restaurant I was just in so you could all suffer as I was made to suffer

I used to add a bit of boilerplate to the bottom of my invoices and made a few thousand £ out of this over the years. It pays way more than you'd think. Also – I got paid quicker.

psychodelic psychadelic psychedelic psychədelic

can never unhear now

God I miss having a pet. Does anyone want to lend me their cat or dog or gerbil or horse or whatever. I will take REALLY good care of him or her. I live on the 4th floor so the horse would be the most difficult BUT I am a horse whisperer so I could make it work.

Not usually one for conspiracy theories but er

Since people again complaining about Insta filler, your periodic reminder that if you click 'For you' at the top of your feed and change it to 'Following', you just get your friends' posts, most recent first, and with no ads.

Always fascinated by people's desks. Currently reading Flesh and David Szalay's suddenly makes perfect sense.

I spent the whole of the '80s wishing I'd grown up in the '70s instead. It was a hideous decade and we should never speak of it again unless it's about Blondie or roller discos, which were quite good.

The teen just asked what you call 'those pieces of paper where you owed people money.' Cheques. She meant cheques.

As absolutely everyone else has pointed out, he was a deeply problematic person. But this album (and especially Utru Horas and Twist with the Morningstars) totally changed the trajectory of my musical tastes back in 1988.

Just plucked up the courage to confront the terrifying young person playing loud phone music on the bus and asked her, in Spanish, if she could put her loudspeakers on. Currently trying to style it out, expression-wise, and make like I was just being incredibly sarcastic.

Are middle-aged people still allowed to buy albums and listen to music at home? I just want to sure of the rules so I don't overstep.

Are we back? Can I stop working now?

You know when hideous fashions come in – like birkenstocks and skinny jeans and ugg boots – and you think wtf is this a joke, but as the years go by you learn to accept them even if you don't love them? Why does that never ever happen with Louis Vuitton bags?

Was confused by how Rosen was a Bluesky laughing stock for this because surely loads of people won't realise? It is literally my job to understand travel changes and I could not work out if my kid would be able to board a plane home last night because of a related issue.

To my non tech normies, PSA: when you share a link, everything after the ? is tracking. Those “query parameters” tell companies exactly how you arrived, what app you clicked, which ad or email sent you, sometimes a unique identifier tied to you. You can delete everything after the question mark.

Think I met the dog off the internet

Watching this video thinking huh Americans really do love baseball caps that's like an incredible number of baseball caps because I am dead inside

Yesss, it's been 30 years since I got to tell the story of when I met Tibor Fischer at a party and I was young and excited and I said oh wow I just read Under the Frog (which I had) and he asked if I liked it and I said it was great and he said you didn't like it did you, and um, no, I hated it.

Hat parade innit.

tiny bit of joni to brighten your day

Got so absorbed in this thread I've forgotten why everyone's talking about the Avignon papacy to begin with

Should I get the new McEwan or is it as boring as my friend says it is?

Etymology: Hey, you ever think about how the word for night in so many European languages is n+that language's word for eight? Me: OMG yes amazing, tell me more! Etymology: Coincidence. Sucker.

Can someone pls explain Leo Woodall to me

“And the Falklands, which were not Dubai…”

"The Government of #Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket." - Pedro Sánchez, Spain (8 Apr 2026)

So is the age of men over or do I have to do this VAT return yes or no

SWIFTS!!!! THE SWIFTS ARE HERE!!! Every year, the 5th or 6th of April. How do they know???? (No but seriously, @levparikian.bsky.social or similar, how do they know? Why does it not change with the weather?)

Fun fact time, since you're all talking about it. Which band released the 1972 album Dark Side of the Moon? Wrong. It was Medicine Head, and Pink Floyd initially called their 1973 album Eclipse as a result. This is going to get you so many points at the pub quiz, you can thank me later.

Blue blue, electric blue

Am in Norway and can confirm everyone is taking this extremely seriously. The closest to crime fiction I can find in this house is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or a collection of Conan Doyle short stories – which is it?

The tortoise is alive!

moby-dick, his eyes enormous: from hell's heart you STAB at moby? for hate's sake you spit your last BREATH at moby? oh! oh! the great shroud of the sea for ahab! the great shroud of the sea rolling on as it rolled five thousand years ago!!!!

You OK babe you've hardly touched your LobNobs

Random Bratislavan things.

[watching Galaxy Quest] Me: Wait, is "crust ahead" from "thrust ahead"?? My very offline friend: Are you OK?

Right, all that remains for me to do is to sit back, relax and enjoy the flight. holy shit

LOL

Bleak House (2005) had the best cast of any adaptation ever and it's not even close en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleak_H...

I follow a few entertaining Spanish accounts on here but you'd be amazed how many threads develop into a discussion of what gross and terrible people the Brits are. Today's is about how we all have carpeted bathrooms. Not sure I've seen a carpeted bathroom since about 1977.

A zero-skills friend of mine completely renovated his flat by setting up an account as a woman and asking forums for construction assistance. Someone eventually blew his cover and then they wouldn't help him any more.

Loved this. It's about former prisoners and the man they think tortured them, but somehow the energy isn't so much 'aren't regimes terrible?' as 'isn't cinema great?'. Only just now read it was shot in secret with only one pro actor, and Panahi will now fly back to Iran to go to prison for it.